What is it about?
This article is about Ryszard Kapuscinski, his book The Emperor and its role in building opposition to Polish communism.
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Why is it important?
There can be little doubt that The Emperor was a work of major importance in focusing attention on the nature of Polish economic development and the mechanisms at work within the minds of individual Poles. It revealed elements of the Third World within Polish society: for a nation that prided itself on being a modern European nation, the eastern bastion of Europe against an uncivilised Asia, a nation that took its cultural bearings from the west rather than the east, which looked to the west for its fashions and its political and economic ambitions, this was a bitter and frustrating observation. That these things were said by a man who was well connected in Polish government circles, a respected journalist, a decorated writer, and a man who had travelled throughout the Soviet Union and the rest of the eastern bloc and who had lived in the Third World for over twenty years, made the observation very difficult to dismiss or deny.
Perspectives
Kapuściński's reflections in this novel and elsewhere in his writings fed into the growing stream of intellectual and economic discontent, increasingly focused on the disastrous leading role of the Party and its monopoly of power, that was building towards the revolt of 1980.
Prof Carl Tighe
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Ryszard Kapuscinski and "The Emperor", The Modern Language Review, October 1996, JSTOR,
DOI: 10.2307/3733518.
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